Preparing the young for a working life

IN THE same way as maths and science, health and safety should become part of the mainstream school curriculum, says Andrew Smith, a senior official with the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work.

European Voice

4/21/04, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/23/14, 8:29 PM CET

Its figures show that young people in the 18-24 age range experience 40% more accidents, some of them serious, in the first year of their working lives than the average. Smith believes that young people should be properly educated in a whole range of health and safety issues.

“Clearly, many youngsters are not well prepared to enter the workplace,” says Smith, who is head of the agency’s information and communication unit.

One way of addressing the problem could be to integrate health and safety into the school curriculum from an early age.

Some Scandinavian countries already do this at primary school level, but Smith says this should be rolled out across the EU to children of all ages.

“Health and safety is still seen as something of a specialized subject and one of our aims is to make it more mainstream,” the Briton adds.

“To promote a long-term safety culture and to achieve a safer and healthier Europe, we must ensure that young people entering the workforce in future are more aware of these issues.”

Another emerging health and safety threat highlighted by the agency as a potential cause for concern is that posed by the number of women entering the workforce, which is expected to soar in the coming years.

The agency says that the health risks faced by women at work tend to be underestimated and neglected, even though statistically women suffer more from work-related stress, as well as infectious, and skin, diseases than men.